FPN is a proud community sponsor of the next Bechdel Tested event! It's a panel discussion on Women & Photography with screening of the amazing film 'Everlasting Moments', dir. Jan Troell, Sweden, 2008. Details and tickets here

Images left to right: Production still from 'Everlasting Moments', dir. Jan Troell, Sweden, 2008 / Alison Bechdel's cartoon strip from 1985 in 'Dykes To Watch Out For', that led to the term 'The Bechdel Test' / Criterion Collection DVD cover for 'Everlasting Moments', dir. Jan Troell, Sweden, 2008

Check out Online Artist Residency Participant Gina Lundy's Open College of Arts blog post about our residency and exhibit!

In the summer of 2017, Feminist Photography Network piloted an online residency, which brought together mid-career woman-identified artists from Canada and Scotland (via the Scotland-based WildFires: Women Photographers Network). The framework of the online residency revolved around monthly deadlines, feedback on work-in-progress, and peer motivation. Based in Brooklyn, Copenhagen, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Highlands of Scotland, and Toronto, the selected artists are aligned in their connection to photo-based practices, interest in community-building, and shared challenges in creating art. These artists have experienced common impediments, such as halts to their practice due to family commitments, precarious employment, and health issues. These and other variables, paired with the repeated underrepresentation of women in art, pose a challenge to sustaining an artistic practice. Exchanges: Dialogue, Hesitation & Creation explores the dynamic process of artistic production, including the failed shoots, self-doubt, and moments of clarity, while celebrating how the chaos of daily life can both inspire and hinder an artistic practice.

Special thanks to Exhibition Project Coordinator Alana West for her tireless support; the staff at Harbourfront Centre for their insight and trust; designer Sophie Paas-Lang for bringing the timeline to life; and Tek Yang and OCAD University’s Epson Imaging Lab for their printing support.

This exhibition is made possible by Creative Scotland, British Arts Council, Danish Arts Council, UK’s Heritage Lottery Fund, Ontario Arts Council, Government of Canada, City of Toronto and Canada Council for the Arts.

GENDER AND THE LENS IIMarch 1-10, 2018

This is our second exhibition of student and recent alumni work in honour of International Women’s Day. This year the show includes artwork from Napier University as well as OCAD and Ryerson Universities. A sister exhibition of work by the same artists willis running concurrently at Napier’s gallery in Edinburgh, UK. Through this exhibition, different aspects and versions of what it means to be gendered female are explored. The relationships,tensions and contradictions between them reveal the slipperiness and intangibility of this supposed category, and the lived experiences it gives rise to.

THE NINE, renowned photographer Katy Grannan’s first feature film, is an intimate, at times disturbing, view into an America most would rather ignore.

There is nothing left of the American dream on the Nine -a solemn destination,a resting place for those who have relinquished the dream. Modesto is a city that lies in California's Central Valley, a region devastated during America'sGreat Depression. Modesto's notorious South Ninth Street -the Nine- is a noman's land where the rules of polite society do not apply. The people living there form a ravaged micro community whose Darwinian existence is a day to day hustle, and survival is by any means necessary. Kiki, however, is the rare bright light whose magnetic optimism is a means of self-preservation. Her childlike enthusiasm belies the stark reality that surrounds her. THE NINE,filmed in an elegiac style, honours the casualties of a broken system-people who might otherwise be forgotten. Raw, poetic, direct, and unnerving, the film is less a window into a foreign world than a distorted mirror reflecting our own shared existence.

Grannan’s photographs are included in the collections of the Whitney Museum ofAmerican Art; The Metropolitan Museum of Art; the Museum of Modern Art, NewYork; the Guggenheim Museum, New York; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art;and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, among many others. She’s also a longtime contributor to The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, and many other important publications. Grannan received her BA from the University ofPennsylvania and her MFA from the Yale School of Art. There are five monographs of her work: Model American, The Westerns, Boulevard, The Nine, and The NinetyNine.

Feminist Photography Network Online Residency

From June 2017 to March 2018 – Feminist Photography Network is piloting an online residency for mid-career artists which brings together 12 lens-based artists to create work and participate in exhibitions in Scotland and Toronto.